I said to my daughter not a week ago that, 'I’m Carol again.' And that’s big. I feel alive again.”

Carol LaValley, PACE client

Mid-20th-century pop music fills the air as a group of friends gather around a table hollering happily and swinging inflatable clubs up and down during a spirited game of whack-a-mole.

But it’s not the carnival game you’re probably imagining.

There’s no animatronic moles popping up and down within the reminiscence therapy room at PACE-RI’s vast facility in Riverside. The game utilizes an interactive projector called the Mobii Multi Touch Table to project images onto the table, which can be manipulated by the users’ touch — technology that would have been science-fiction at the time when the individuals currently playing with it were born.

The whack-a-mole style game, and the other games and activities like it programmed within the projector, are all designed specifically to encourage multiplayer collaboration, competition, and generate physical activity among the participants; all of which are beneficial to assist one the target demographics who come to PACE — people living through the varying progressive stages of dementia and memory loss disorders.

“When I started here, back then it was just knitted blankets and some sensory items on the wall,” said Suzanne Balassone, Chief Operating Officer for PACE, which opened its first facility in Rhode Island in 2005 and its Riverside location in 2021. “The concept here has always been to provide a safer space for people with that diagnosis, but recently there's really some evidence-based mechanisms that we've added to this room that really help to perpetuate people with that diagnosis…It's really stepped up.”

PACE daycare activities assistant Rosa Rivera (right) cheers on clients as they play a game of bopping the "Blue Suede Shoes" to Elvis' song during a game on the Mobii interactive table and floor system, which makes the participants move and have fun doing so.

Finding their “namaste”
The projector is just one of the new implements added to the reminiscence therapy room, colloquially known within the facility as the “Namaste Room”.

While the concept is simple on its face — to provide a place for people with mild memory loss or more advanced forms of dementia to gather safely and enjoy activities that center and calm them — the modern approach includes a lot of cutting edge touches to boost its efficacy.

One side of the room has been transformed into a living room straight out of the 1960s through a selectively-chosen wallpaper pattern, paintings acquired from antique shops, and a green sofa complete with the protective vinyl sheeting still attached. On the couch sits a variety of lifelike animatronic pet companions from Pawtucket-based Ageless Innovation LLC, which provide tactile feedback and a proxy for a loving animal when seniors can no longer care for them. A variety of puzzles with enlarged pieces sit ready for assembly.

In this area, a few women are seated in comfortable reclining chairs. One of them is knitting, the other just enjoying a relaxing moment to herself. In the middle of the room is a large aquarium with a large variety of fish, which has shown to promote feelings of relaxation and reduce anxiety. To its left is a “bubble wall”, which reduces agitation in people with more advanced dementia. A woman is tended to by a nurse while looking at it. Beyond that is the game table, where the half dozen whack-a-molers can be heard laughing and rejoicing in the game as though they were children again on the playground.

The variety of choice, familiarized surroundings, and no structured insistence on what any participant “should” be doing at any given time is all a strategic part of the therapeutic nature of the room.

“If you experience any kind of cognitive loss, your world doesn't make sense anymore, and it's scary,” Balassone said. “People are asking you questions, and that creates anxiety. And here, it's all things that make sense to them.”

As a provider of healthcare services for people aged 55 and older with chronic health needs who wish to remain living at home, PACE’s model is unique in Rhode Island in that it acts as both a medical services provider and an insurance provider for its members. They also provide transportation to and from the facility to partake in their vast array of services. As of this article they care for 462 patients statewide, 40% of which have some form of dementia-related issue.

Given the pervasiveness of patients with memory loss, PACE also invests resources to help train family caregivers on how to recognize symptoms and deal with the progression of dementia disorders.

“Sometimes caregivers can get frustrated. Like, ‘You know better than to do that.’ They get angry, because they don't see their loved one function in the place that they're really at,” said Balassone. “So we do a lot of training with caregivers around how to manage these behaviors at home.”

As an outpatient provider, the goal is to allow their patients to safely retain some independence without going into a full-time care facility.

“We're kind of like a nursing home without walls,” Balassone said. “Our whole mission is to keep these elders in the community. Where they grew up, where they raised their families, where they want to be.”

The memory care program, specifically, is one that touches the hearts of administrators like Rachel Nassif, who works as the Day Center Director for PACE.

“I think it's a wonderful program,” she said. “It's a model that I had never seen before, and to be able to provide wraparound services for participants and keep them out of nursing homes is the best thing that we can do. It fulfills me every day.”

PACE Day Center Director, Rachel Nassif, and PACE Chief Operating Officer, Suzanne Balassone, both say the Namaste Room gives them a renewed sense of hope every time they enter.

‘I feel alive again’
Talking with some of the women seated in the living room area of the reminiscence therapy room, it was clear that the program had made a big difference for them.

“I came from having a nervous breakdown. I wasn't taking my medicine. One thing about PACE, they see that you get your medicine. They make sure you take them. And I'm happy to be here,” said Marie Ward, a Pawtucket resident who has been coming to PACE for 11 years. “I don’t know where I would be if it wasn’t for PACE. I love it because it’s nice and peaceful. I can do my knitting and just be quiet.”

For Carol LaValley, who currently lives in an apartment in North Providence and has been coming to PACE for two years now, the Namaste Room and services at PACE have been life-changing in very tangible ways.

“When I came to Rhode Island when COVID started, I had no friends. I was completely alone. I was divorced. I was all by myself. I have two kinds of seizure disorders. I was a mess,” she said. “In the two years since I started coming to PACE, my seizures have cut down 70%. My diabetes is almost under control, and I’ve lost an enormous amount of weight…When you’re happy, you don’t have to work at it as hard.”

LaValley said that she likes to come four days a week, just like her friend Marie, who checks in with her every morning. She said the staff and people that come to PACE have become like a second family, and that the guided physical exercise, dietary assistance, and the feeling of camaraderie and community provided by the Namaste Room have all contributed to a total health turnaround for her.

“I was in assisted living when I started here. I’m not in assisted living anymore. I don’t need it anymore. That’s how far I’ve come,” she said. “I said to my daughter not a week ago that, ‘I’m Carol again.’ And that’s big. I feel alive again.”

To learn more about PACE and their services, visit pace-ri.org. To inquire about becoming a member yourself or on behalf of someone you love, call 401-654-4072 or email enrollment@pace-ri.org.

To the right, Carol LaValley explains how the services at PACE have resulted in huge health benefits for her in just two years. In the background, Marie Ward listens. Ward has been using PACE services for 11 years.